Hey peeps,

First the back story, my PC (beloved Q6700) has died mwaahhh may she rest in peace. Anywho I am probably the worst online shopper in the world and could really use the benefit of your vast PC knowledge.

I have a maximum budget of £1000 and need a new PC, It can be pre-built or self assemble which ever gets the best value, i'm just not really up with the component scene.

This PC will be used mostly for Minecraft and its many variations so any suggestions/advice will be much appreciated and if not I love you all anyway......

many thanks
Stuart

If it's just for Minecraft. Then I think almost anythink with 4GB and atleast 6th series card can run it. I'm no pro, but I had a friend set me up with a good gaming pc.

http://www.scan.co.uk/3xs/shared/8bcecf88-5fdf-4637-a249-6c21a74bac29

Here's the link to the build. There are some parts that seem to be missing in the page. As I have Asus z971 and windows 8.1 which for some reason are not selected on this page. But with them it costs like 859£

But if you only need mostly for minecraft rather then any newer games, then I advise getting something cheaper. You could probably get a prebuilt one with right spec's for about 400£.

Thanks for the reply Kniznik, will take a look.

My PC is about 5 years old and was about £400 at the time i purchased it. Even now i get around 120FPS on Fast minecraft with 16 chunk render and around 90FPS with fancy graphics. I do however have an nvidea graphics card which i have been told works very well with minecraft for whatever reason.

Where as i cant really help much on exactly what to buy definitely dont go to over the top if youre only playing minecraft and a few other games!

From the small amount of research i recently did for myself I'd say an intel i5 and some kind of GeForce graphics card.

I'm sure there will be people better than me at this who can help on here!

Thanks Michael

Right, I hope none of this sounds like I'm trying to teach you to "suck eggs", and if I'm wrong on anything someone please correct me, as it's all coming straight out of my head ...

First of all, you need to decide which make of CPU to go with. AMD used to work in conjunction with NVIDIA graphics cards, but I think they now own Radeon - so their CPU's work better with Radeon GFX cards (so I'm told). If you go for an Intel processor, then I don't think it matters what make GFX card you get.

Next thing you need to decide is how many cores you want your CPU to have. When I bought my system, I went for the quad core option because I use a lot of old software, so they only use one core, which the more cores you go, the slower the processor they are using gets. However, if you are mostly using new programs that support multi-core processors, the the more cores the better.

For example, on a 2.7 GHz quad-core CPU, old programs are only using a 0.675GHz processor ... if I'd gone for an eight-core processor, they would only use a speed of 0.3375GHz - marginally faster than my first PC I bought back in 2001!!!

Next is RAM, I would say start with a minimum of 8GB and make sure the system is capable of further expansion. 8GB should do you fine for quite a while, but leaves you room to expand at a later date in case you need it.

For the GFX card, don't just go for the one with the most RAM. The more expensive ones with lesser RAM than a "similar looking" one will probably perform a lot better (and last longer).

I'd definitely consider systems with Solid State Hard Drives (SSD) using SATA3 and which also have USB3 ports. My system has a 120GB SSD for the OS and speed sensitive / processor intensive games / programs. I also have a 2TB 720RPM SATA3 HDD which is split into two partitions - F for files (i.e. your documents folder), and P for Programs (when installing a program / game that you don't want on the SSD, just change the "C" in the path to "P" and leave the rest of the path as it is).

Oh - if your old system used drives (HDD / CD / DVD / etc.) that connect via IDE ports, and you want to use them / connect the HDD to recover your files, make sure the motherboard has IDE ports! - I didn't check this when I bought mine and found it only had SATA 3 ports! I ended up buying a cheap HDD USB caddy and using that to get my old files.

Here's a couple of examples from where I got my desktop PC from...

Quad-core 3.4GHz Intel CPU, 8GB Ram, Barebones kit - £459.99 inc VAT - This system is not a bad starting point - just remember that you need to add a GFX card, Hard Drive, and DVD drive. This one has the same case as mine, which has two fans on the side which you can switch off if needed

Eight-core 4.2GHz AMD CPU, 8GB RAM, Barebones kit - £389.99 inc VAT - This system is even cheaper, but with better CPU speed. As above, you'll need to add GFX card, HDD, DVD drive, etc - but at least you can afford to pick a decent GFX card, some decent drives, and still have cash left over for a new keyboard, 1080p monitor and some decent speakers (and a decent headset too!)

I'd just like to recommend this site as a great place to buy components and stuff. It's always as cheap as you'll find. And they sell pre-built computers basically at the same price you'd pay buying the components yourself.

http://www.cclonline.com/

I buy everything from them. Amazon is also good price-wise.

Thanks guys for the help. Great explanation Soul, so far I am 95% sure I want intel cpu and nvidia gfx. For me this a big investment so i'm being extremely cautious.

Thanks again for the help, I'm gonna keep looking....

For example, on a 2.7 GHz quad-core CPU, old programs are only using a 0.675GHz processor ... if I'd gone for an eight-core processor, they would only use a speed of 0.3375GHz - marginally faster than my first PC I bought back in 2001!!!

Soul_UK

This is a very common misconception. A 2.7 GHz quad core processor is really just like 4 x 2.7 GHz processors. No trade off at all.
The slight caveat is Intel's hyper-threading. With hyper-threading, your cores can split themselves in half for better multi-tasking/parallelization, at a slight loss of per-thread-speed. However they will only do this if there is benefit to it. They can still operate as a whole core too.

You will therefore usually see two numbers for intel processors: cores and threads. For instance:

Intel i3: usually 2 cores 4 threads.
Intel i5: usually 4 cores 4 threads.
intel i7: usually 4 cores 8 threads.

So if they are all the same rated GHz, the i3 has half the processing power of the i5, but can multitask just as well. The i5 has the same processing power as the i7, but i7 can multitask better.

Sorry to poke a hole in an otherwise good analysis. But the world seemed so much better once I found this out myself




But back to computer choosing. If self-building, there are a number of components that need to be compatible with each other. For instance:

• Motherboard socket type == processor socket type (essential)
  
• Motherboard max ram speed >= ram speed
  
• Power supply wattage > peak expected power draw (essential)
  
• Motherboard number of SATA ports >= required SATA components
  
• Motherboard is SATA III (desirable if hard drives etc are)
  
• Graphics card connectors compatible with monitor (not essential)
  
• Right size case (a bit hard to get this wrong but possible)
  
• Power supply has necessary connectors for everything (eg graphics card)
  
• Surround-sound capability if you have some fancy audio setup?
  

I might have forgotten something. I don't want to scare you off: it's a great thing to build your own pc. Just so you know it isn't always mix and match. If you are unsure on compatibility of components, just ask and someone will be able to tell you.

Yeah... with a budget of 1000 you could put together a fairly top line system. My entire rig is around £890 not including the monitor and TV.

Also if it's primarily for gaming, go for an i5 processor. They have better return rates for games processing. i7's are adjusted better for high end calculation programs like Maya, scientific and business programs etc.

Cheers again for the help guys, where did you get your rig Draze?

... This is a very common misconception. A 2.7 GHz quad core processor is really just like 4 x 2.7 GHz processors...

Discharge

Interesting, but no I'm really confused. I run a lot of older software which will only use a single core to run off, and they run noticeably slower (when processing tasks) than on my old desktop which had an AMD single-core 2.3GHz processor and 4GB RAM. This would support my "theory" I mentioned above, which I gained from what a few people had said and some articles I read in technology magazines / websites. So now you've thrown a spanner in the works and I'm going to have to research this now (I hate being told something is "this" from several sources, when it's actually "that"!)

As for the link you provided - you're right, they are really good prices for what you get - added to my favorites

FWIW if you don't already have one I'd suggest getting a USB to hard drive adapter, if you don't need ATA/IDE there are some nice USB-SATA units, and it saves having to connect an old drive internally if you don't want it to be a permanent feature.

If you do want to connect an old drive then SATA to ATA bridges are available so its probably better to pick your mainboard based on performance not legacy features.

Good idea, cheers Boriseng

Cheers again for the help guys, where did you get your rig Draze?

TheBlueGenie

I actually cobbled my rig together from various places, one of which Discharge mentioned.

My rig is as follows.

CPU -- i5 3.5ghz (socket 4690)
Mother board -- Mid level ASUS for socket 4690
RAM -- Corsiar dominator 1600mhz
GPU -- ASUS GTX780 CU2 3Gb
SFX -- Asus Xonar DS
PSU -- 750w Corsair modular
Cooler -- Corsair Hydro H80i
HDD -- 1x 120 ssd / 1 x 1Tb sata 3 / 1x 250
Optical -- 1 DVD dual layer RW / 1 x Blue Ray RW

Handles Crysis2 at full res but cooling in my room is a bit tricky. Even this is a little high around 80 oC under full load. But like i said my room is kinda small and not very well ventilated so it's just cycling warm air.

Apart from that it pretty much kicks ass for such a basic higher end system.

Thanks everyone for your help, here is what I went for in the end New Box. It's would have been within the budget but the damn tax man kills it, lol.

Anyway thanks again for all your help, can't wait for delivery and a modded server to test it on

Cheers
TheBlueGenie

HOW MUCH!!!

That's a nice system that shouldn't need upgrading for quite a while!

Nuff said